Yoga Teacher Confidential: Secrets of Becoming a Great Yoga Teacher

A few weeks ago, I posted a simple carousel on Instagram in my “Here’s the Tea” series for yoga teachers: not every pose needs you to call out a Sanskrit name. The comments rolled in—some grateful, some furious, most somewhere in the thoughtful middle. This episode is the longer answer that didn’t fit on eight slides. I walk through what I was actually trying to say in the post, where the conversation sharpened my thinking, and why this was never really an English-versus-Sanskrit question. To...

The first time I felt true parasympathetic rest, I was ten minutes into legs up the wall during a restorative workshop, and the entire outline for my book The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery dropped into my head, fully formed. I had no idea this state was even available to me for free—and once I felt it, I understood why so many well-meaning restorative classes miss the mark. Telling students to relax doesn’t make them relax. The nervous system doesn’t respond to verbal instructions—it responds t...

Right now, three tracks are playing inside you. One is heavy—the energy that makes you hit snooze. One is wired—the one drafting tomorrow's class at 2 AM. And one is clear—the energy that shows up when teaching just flows. Yoga philosophy has a name for this trio: the gunas. In this episode, I walk through one of the most practical frameworks in all of yoga philosophy. Your students will grasp it in thirty seconds, you can use it to theme an entire class, and it will change how you understand...

You know the spiral. A student walks out of your class early, and by the time you reach your car, you've decided your classes are getting stale, the studio is about to replace you, and you should probably go back to your day job. The student leaving was the first arrow. The forty-minute story you built on top of it? That's the second arrow—and it hurts far more than the first one ever did. This week, I unpack one of the most useful teachings in yoga philosophy: the Buddhist concept of the two...

For over a decade I taught private yoga to Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams, and somewhere along the way I realized I'd been teaching privates wrong. Not because I didn't know yoga. Because nobody had ever sat me down and said, A private is a different craft. Here's how. In this episode I walk through the three shifts that turn a group-class-with-one-student into an actual private lesson: sequencing for one body (not the whole room) by applying 6–4–2 as a checklist, slowing your pace about thi...

The best yoga teachers never stop being students—but the longer you teach, the harder that becomes. In this episode, Sage Rountree shares how selling her yoga studio after fifteen years unexpectedly gave her back something she'd been missing: the freedom to simply be a student again. Sage explores the difference between continuing education and true studenthood—the kind where you sit in the seat of not knowing and let someone else lead. She gets honest about why studio ownership, local reputa...

"Get out of your comfort zone." It's practically a bumper sticker. But here's the definition I keep coming back to: the place where you can operate without fear of failure. That's not a limitation. That's a superpower. In this episode, I share the story behind the name Comfort Zone Yoga—what it actually means for your teaching, your confidence, and the kind of teacher you're becoming. We cover what happens in the room when you're teaching at the edge of your comfort zone, why most teacher tra...

I was teaching my regular Monday night balance class when I realized something: the centering I've been guiding for years—body, breath, mind, intention—is a walkthrough of the koshas. I just never called it that. In this episode, I break down the five koshas (body, breath, brain, belly, bliss—the five B's) and show you how this ancient model from the Taittiriya Upanishad is already woven into every class you teach. From your opening centering to your final savasana, you've been guiding studen...

Have you ever noticed how even your most loyal yoga students eventually drift away? Life happens—schedules change, people move—and without a way to stay in touch between classes, those connections fade. In this episode of Yoga Teacher Confidential, Sage Rountree breaks down why a newsletter is one of the simplest, most ethical tools yoga teachers have for building lasting relationships with students. You'll learn what permission-based marketing actually means (and why it should make you feel ...

Classes end in a variety of ways. Last episode, we talked about choosing to drop a class on your own terms. But what happens when the decision isn't yours? Maybe the studio cut your class. Maybe an illness or injury forced you to step away. Maybe life circumstances made it impossible to keep showing up. This is a different kind of loss—and it deserves its own conversation. I'm coming at this from both sides: over 20 years as a yoga teacher and 15 years as a yoga studio owner. I've had classes...

I was teaching a free yoga class at an outdoor gear store in Edmonton when a woman walked in with a toddler and an infant. Not a sleeping infant in a carrier: these children were alert, wandering, making noise. And if you've ever taught yoga, you know exactly what happens to your nervous system in that moment. In this episode, I'm sharing what I've learned about staying composed—and student-centered—when you truly don't know who's going to show up. From the student who took my breath cues so ...

If you've ever spent three hours planning a sixty-minute yoga class—or shown up with nothing but vibes and hoped for the best—this episode is for you. I'm unpacking what I call the Planning-Confidence Cycle: the exhausting trap that keeps yoga teachers bouncing between meticulous overpreparation and chronic underpreparing. Here's the thing: neither extreme gives you what you actually want. Overplanning leaves you too in your head to see your students. Winging it leaves you uncertain whether y...

When I started teaching yoga at the UNC Wellness Center, I had to complete hospital safety training about bloodborne pathogens and biohazard spills. I was teaching yoga in a gym. The odds of encountering a biohazard during downward-facing dog were essentially zero. But they paid me for that training time, and there were snacks at the meetings—so I wasn't complaining. Teaching at gyms and YMCAs isn't a consolation prize for yoga teachers who can't get hired at studios. It's one of the best pos...